7 o 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
numbers of sharks, swimming together in 
“ schools,” like sardines, enter the lagoons at 
certain seasons of the year and cause no end of 
excitement among the brown-skinned people ; 
just as much, in fact, as that which occurs when 
a “ school ” of bottle-nosed whales is driven 
ashore by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands. 
Every now and then one may see noted 
in Australian papers the arrival of an island 
trading vessel bringing, among other cargo, so 
many tons of shark-fins; and the uninitiated 
naturally wonder for what on earth shark-fins 
are brought to the marts of civilisation. That 
is easily answered—they are regarded as a great 
delicacy by John Chinaman. (By the way, it 
seems an oversight that no one in England 
thought of presenting Li Hung Chang, when 
he visited England a year ago, with a string 
of shark-fins in return for his inexhaustible 
presents to the British aristocracy of packets 
of tea; a dozen or so—especially if not quite 
dried—would have moved him greatly.) 
For the last fifty years shark-catching has 
been followed on a large or small scale by 
the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, from 
Tonga in the south to the beauteous Pelews 
